One of the children being taken out of a court hearing last week.Photo Credit: HaKol HaYehudi

Those of us who live in democratic societies have grown to see the limits placed on our naturally exuberant police forces as essential components of our civil freedoms. We know a person may not be interrogated without his or her attorney being present. We know a person must be arraigned and charged with a crime, or be set free. We know a minor may not be interrogated without his or her parent present.

Not in the wild-west territory of Judea and Samaria, where police is more likely to be brutal than not, especially to Jewish “settlers” (Hebrew for Pariah) and definitely not regarding Jewish boys of bar mitzvah age and younger.

Every week, it seems, we are treated to new evidence of Israel’s security forces in the “territories” appearing to merge with the Arab regime police forces all around us, employing brute force, intimidation, illegal incarceration and the occasional physical torture, because, frankly, they’ve run out of other ways to solve crimes.

A case in point is the recent testimony of two young teens, one 12, the other 13, who testified on video which was published by HaKol HaYehudi (The Jewish Voice).

At the end of last week, three young teens from Bat Ayin were released after spending six days in prison on suspicion of firebombing an Arab taxi, injuring six Arabs.

All three children withstood extremely difficult conditions and especially long interrogations, accompanied with threats and sophisticated tactics, utilizing relentless psychological pressure.

13-year-old M. told HaKol HaYehudi about the investigation methods employed by the Police Central Unit (Yamar) and the General Security Service (Shabak).

M. and his friends were on their way to Jerusalem Sunday morning, last week.

“At the Gush intersection (a hitchhiking post), a car stopped to give us a ride to Jerusalem. Two of us got in; the third boy wanted to get in too, but the driver said that he would only agree to take two. The driver and his wife started talking to us about ‘Price Tag’ (the clandestine retaliation movement against the left-wing and Arabs) and whether it was a good thing or not,” M. related.

“The driver turned on the radio and it was someone talking about ‘Price Tags’ and that we have to burn down mosques during the day, with the Arabs still inside, and that he tried to join the Price Tag movement and they wouldn’t agree with him. It seemed very strange, but we didn’t understand what was going on,“ M. described.

“When the radio piece was over, the driver started asking us who threw the firebomb, and that of course we knew who it is.” M. answered that he and his friend had no idea who did it.

The two children still didn’t realize that the innocent “hitch” was a actually a police trap.

“We reached Kiryat Moshe and asked to get out, but the driver said that he would pull over for us at a stop further down the road. When we got to that stop, the driver said that it’s illegal to stop at the bus stop and there’s an increased fine for it, so he would stop after the next turn. He stopped after the turn and two detectives immediately jumped on us and told us that we were under arrest for suspicion of conspiracy to commit a crime.”

After several days under arrest, M. was led near the interrogation room when he suddenly heard loud shouts.

“I saw the driver of the car that we hitchhiked in, handcuffed inside the interrogation room, with a detective shouting at him, ‘what did you talk about with them during the ride? We already know everything about you!’ and stuff like that. I heard him tell the detective that he knows me only because he picked me up one day at the Gush intersection and that he has no connection to us.”

“After that, I was put into a holding cell and suddenly they put him in too. He started shouting at me: ‘What did you do? I am a married man and I don’t want to get involved in problems.’”

The investigating police officer then started to shout at M. that he and his friends must tell the detectives what they did in order to get the man released to his family.

“I didn’t really pay attention to him, so they took him out and I didn’t see him again,” said M.

About the Author:Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and
two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.

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If the Police dared act the way with Arab adults, it would be internationally pilloried and that's why the police doesn't dare deny them the Habeas Corpus. However, when it comes to Jews, the treatment is quite different: adults are beaten up and children are entrapped and interrogated without parents or attorneys being present. Where did they learn their job? The KGB? Every single police officer implicated in this case needs to be fired and stripped of his Israeli citizenship. They have been pay to serve the nation of Israel as peace officers, but they don't know what it is to be a public servant and they are acting against the nation paying their salary.

The police in Jerusalem arrested 13 year old boys who were walking by a protest on their way to the Kotel on Shabat afternoon as was their usual Shabat practice. Luckily the eleven year old brother not taken and was a witness, otherwise how would the parents know their sons were put into a police car and taken to police station on Shabat afternoon in handcuffs. Disgraceful that the boys had to remain there until 11:00pm, their crime wearing a hat and going to the Kotel to pray.

Turns out the kids had done nothing. The police just wanted to show the public how zealous they are in punishing crime, so they grabbed innocents off the street. Being arrested doesn't mean being guilty. Being arrested means you're suspected of wrong doing, although, in the case, that wasn't even needed: all the kids had to do was being waking at the convenient moment the police needed a chump

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